Yesterday, for the first time in 37 years...

Dana

Dana

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Dana
...I flew into an airport with a control tower.

I learned to fly at a tower field (CPS, back when it was called Bi-State Parks, and it was a "control zone", not "class D"), but after that I rented occasionally at uncontrolled fields, then bought a NORDO T-Craft, then a 10 year hiatus from flying, then paramotors, ultralights, and finally the Fisher I have now, still based at an uncontrolled field. Little grass fields with dilapidated hangars, antiques, and homebuilts are my style, not acres of concrete, security gates, and "follow me" trucks. But yesterday I needed an excuse to go somewhere different, to test my new GPS setup in preparation for flying my new Starduster 1000 miles home next week (hopefully!), so I decided to go to HFD for lunch at the new restaurant there.

No problem, tower didn't seem to have any trouble understanding me (open cockpit) even though I had trouble understanding myself afterward on liveatc. I had trouble understanding the tower only once when they said something unexpected (asking if I'd been there before; people have mistakenly landed at the closed airport just across the river and they wanted to make sure I knew HFD is on the west side, which I did). Only place I messed up was not reading back my taxi clearance when contacting ground for departure (never had to do that back then). And they kept asking me where I was while airborne (small wooden aircraft, no transponder, 55mph cruise speed). All in all a good experience and stretching of my comfort zone.
 
37 years of flight reviews and never went to or talked about ground operations at a controlled airport?

Ive yet to have my first review, so I don't know any better, but that surprises me.
 
It's only in the past 3 years I started flying N-numbered planes again, didn't need a flight review for paramotors and ultralights. You can't cover everything in a flight review; the two I've had since then (one in a J-3, one in a Quicksilver) focused on the kind of flying I normally do.
 
Dana said:
It's only in the past 3 years I started flying N-numbered planes again, didn't need a flight review for paramotors and ultralights. You can't cover everything in a flight review; the two I've had since then (one in a J-3, one in a Quicksilver) focused on the kind of flying I normally do.
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I see. I did assume you'd been doing reviews all those years.
 
Yep. I have never had a flight review. And I have been flying for over 20 years now.
 
Dana said:
...I flew into an airport with a control tower.

I learned to fly at a tower field (CPS, back when it was called Bi-State Parks, and it was a "control zone", not "class D"), but after that I rented occasionally at uncontrolled fields, then bought a NORDO T-Craft, then a 10 year hiatus from flying, then paramotors, ultralights, and finally the Fisher I have now, still based at an uncontrolled field. Little grass fields with dilapidated hangars, antiques, and homebuilts are my style, not acres of concrete, security gates, and "follow me" trucks. But yesterday I needed an excuse to go somewhere different, to test my new GPS setup in preparation for flying my new Starduster 1000 miles home next week (hopefully!), so I decided to go to HFD for lunch at the new restaurant there.

No problem, tower didn't seem to have any trouble understanding me (open cockpit) even though I had trouble understanding myself afterward on liveatc. I had trouble understanding the tower only once when they said something unexpected (asking if I'd been there before; people have mistakenly landed at the closed airport just across the river and they wanted to make sure I knew HFD is on the west side, which I did). Only place I messed up was not reading back my taxi clearance when contacting ground for departure (never had to do that back then). And they kept asking me where I was while airborne (small wooden aircraft, no transponder, 55mph cruise speed). All in all a good experience and stretching of my comfort zone.
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What is now a class D was an "Airport Traffic Area (ATA)", not a control zone. An ATA wasn't classified as controlled airspace. It was classified as "other". A control zone may or may not have coexisted with an ATA.
 
The new system is so much better now. I started taking lessons a few years before they ditched the old phraseology then stopped for 10 years. I was pleasantly surprised/relieved when I returned to finish up.
 
Kritchlow said:
What is now a class D was an "Airport Traffic Area (ATA)", not a control zone. An ATA wasn't classified as controlled airspace. It was classified as "other". A control zone may or may not have coexisted with an ATA.
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Out of curiosity, do you have a source for that? Everyone I've talked to, including air traffic controllers who were around then, say it was a "control zone." I'm very interested to learn the old terms because I teach a lot of rusty pilots who still remember the old classification system.
 
Harold Rutila said:
Out of curiosity, do you have a source for that? Everyone I've talked to, including air traffic controllers who were around then, say it was a "control zone." I'm very interested to learn the old terms because I teach a lot of rusty pilots who still remember the old classification system.
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I was a CFI back in those days. I'm sure there's an old AIM somewhere to be found.

There was four classes of airspace:
1) controlled
2) uncontrolled
3) special use
4) other

If you do the research you will find the old "airport traffic area" fell under other. The size was automatically 3,000 agl and 5 mile radius.
 
Kritchlow said:
If you do the research you will find the old "airport traffic area" fell under other. The size was automatically 3,000 agl and 5 mile radius.
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Ok, cool. Were the old form of TRSAs also classified under "other" like they are today?
 
Harold Rutila said:
Ok, cool. Were the old form of TRSAs also classified under "other" like they are today?
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Can't remember... I'm guessing controlled most TRSA's became ARSA's, today's class C.
The old controlled included
-- positive control area (now class A)
-- continental control area (above 14,500')
-- terminal control areas (now class B)
-- ARSA (which was a relatively new class. Many old TRSA became ARSA... Now class C)
-- probably something I forgot.
-- control zones (some very odd restrictions concerning night flying/IFR)
 
Kritchlow said:
Can't remember... I'm guessing controlled most TRSA's became ARSA's, today's class C.
The old controlled included
-- positive control area (now class A)
-- continental control area (above 14,500')
-- terminal control areas (now class B)
-- ARSA (which was a relatively new class. Many old TRSA became ARSA... Now class C)
-- probably something I forgot.
-- control zones (some very odd restrictions concerning night flying/IFR)
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I'm glad you tackled that, because I've forgotten all of that crap. LOL.

The alphabet soup did do one thing -- it standardized a lot of really goofy and weird airspace differences.
 
Indeed, not everyone lives near a tower, not everyone does tower ops for their BFRs.

Lots of AG guys avoid them like the plague, even though it's really not that big of a deal
 
Harold Rutila said:
Out of curiosity, do you have a source for that? Everyone I've talked to, including air traffic controllers who were around then, say it was a "control zone." I'm very interested to learn the old terms because I teach a lot of rusty pilots who still remember the old classification system.
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Class D's combined Airport Traffic Areas and Control Zones. Kind of. ATA's set a communication requirement, ya gotta talk to the Tower. They were a 5 statue mile radius of the airport up to 3000. They were not depicted on the charts. Control Zones were "controlled airspace." Their purpose was to take controlled airspace to the surface. Look at a lot of Class D's with their surrounding Class E Surface Areas. In the olden days those together were the Control Zone. Blue ones had a Tower, magenta ones didn't. If you were in a blue Control Zone, but not below 3000 AGL and within 5 statue miles of the airport, you didn't have to talk to the Tower. Control Zones did not set a communication requirement. Class D's today set both the communication requirement and controlled airspace's weather requirements.
 
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denverpilot said:
I'm glad you tackled that, because I've forgotten all of that crap. LOL.

The alphabet soup did do one thing -- it standardized a lot of really goofy and weird airspace differences.
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lol. Yeah. The weird goofy Americans finally got absorbed into the ICAO pod.
 
Harold Rutila said:
Ok, cool. Were the old form of TRSAs also classified under "other" like they are today?
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I don't remember for sure, but I don't think they had any kind of "type of airspace" classification. They were just an area where a certain type of ATC service was provided. When it was first decided that radar should be used to provide services to VFR aircraft, programs were developed. In a nutshell it went like this. Stage one service was traffic advisories. Then came Stage 2, sequencing. They would use radar to fit VFR's into the flow. Stage 3 added separation. Where Stage 3 radar service was provided they depicted the areas where it was provided on the charts and called them TRSA's
 
luvflyin said:
Class D's combined Airport Traffic Areas and Control Zones. Kind of. ATA's set a communication requirement, ya gotta talk to the Tower. They were a 5 statue mile radius of the airport up to 3000. They were not depicted on the charts. Control Zones were "controlled airspace." Their purpose was to take controlled airspace to the surface. Look at a lot of Class D's with their surrounding Class E Surface Areas. In the olden days those together were the Control Zone. Blue ones had a Tower, magenta ones didn't. If you were in a blue Control Zone, but not below 3000 AGL and within 5 statue miles of the airport, you didn't have to talk to the Tower. Control Zones did not set a communication requirement. Class D's today set both the communication requirement and controlled airspace's weather requirements.
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As I recall the ATA would become controlled airspace if the ceilings dropped below 1,000 feet &/or visibility dropped below 3 miles. Additionally there was typically a corridor in the direction of a VOR for approaches that became controlled airspace when minimums dropped. If the weather dropped did the ATA's become controlled airspace all the way to 10,000 feet too?
 
Briar Rabbit said:
As I recall the ATA would become controlled airspace if the ceilings dropped below 1,000 feet &/or visibility dropped below 3 miles. Additionally there was typically a corridor in the direction of a VOR for approaches that became controlled airspace when minimums dropped. If the weather dropped did the ATA's become controlled airspace all the way to 10,000 feet too?
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Not quite like that. If the reported weather at the airport was less than 1000/3 you couldn't land or take off VFR. But it didn't change what kind of airspace the ATA was. The corridor that made most Control Zones a keyhole shape was controlled airspace just like the rest of the Control Zone, to the surface, regardless of what the weather was. The top of Control Zones was 14,500. Thats where the Continental Control Area started. The CCA is still around, kinda. All airspace in the US 14,500 up to 18,000 is Class E. They just don't use the term Continental Control Area anymore.
 
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